About Me

By training, I'm an attorney with an interest in constitutional law, immigration law and international law. My hobbies include sewing (I'm a seamstress and can usually be found sewing costumes for myself or my friends.), genealogy research (I love researching my family and can do it for hours online.), reading (usually trash but recently some non fiction legal books). And I'm a Christian, well my own version of one.

Monday, December 15, 2014

I started with around 5 yards of uncut corduroy. Not enough for the pattern, but I decided to do a contrast collar and cuffs to cut down on it, and shorten the skirt if I had to. Which I frequently do with my 1950s dresses because they were LONG to allow for the petticoats. So I start cutting out the bodice. And as I go to cut out the second part, I realize that I'd cut without paying attention to the nap.

*face palm*

Okay, so how do I handle this? Knowing I'm already short on fabric, I decide just to keep the mistake going. Maybe no one will notice, right? So I finish cutting everything out, including lining for the bodice and interfacing and pack up everything to take home to my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

I start sewing. I try on the bodice and look down. You can totally see the nap. I ask my parents if they can tell, mom can't at first, but dad can. We decide that I might as well keep going, so I work on the skirt. After sewing together several panels and putting in the pockets I realize that I only cut two sides instead of four.

*face palm*

At this point, I hate the dress and my mom pretty much just looked at me and said we're going to the fabric store.

Christmas dress take two: I bought the right amount of fabric (black crepe) and lining (a pretty black and white houndstooth) as well as a yard of white satin to do the collar and cuffs.

By the way, at this point, I have two weeks to get the dress done to wear to The Nutcracker which is why I started making a new dress for Christmas to begin with. After I got home on Sunday, I cut out the collar and cuffs, to get it out of the way. So my goal on day one (the Monday after the fabric store) was to get everything cut out. I got the black cut out, and part of the lining. The second day, I finished the lining, washed the interfacing (I just used muslin) and started sewing. Day three: finish the bodice, except the collar and cuffs.

Day four: fixed a fitting issue and got the collar on.

Day five: collar and cuffs on and with fancy
stitching on the edges. Started pinning all the skirt panels together.

By the evening of day six, I was working on pinning the lining in place. At that point, all that was left was the zipper, stitching the lining down and then hemming the lining and the
dress itself.

On day seven, I hung up the dress to let the skirt settle before hemming.

Day eight, I was really tired and didn't work on my dress. As of day nine, the dress just needed the lining finished and the both the
lining and dress hemmed. The overskirt was underway, but the petticoat hadn't
been touched yet.

Day eleven: I finished hemming the overskirt, with a satin stitch. And stopped for the night because if I knew that if I didn't every single seam was going to end up with a satin stitch. So all that was left was the gathering and the waistband. And the petticoat.

By the Friday before the event (day twelve), all that was left was the petticoat so I spent my Saturday cutting and gathering yards and yards and yards of netting.

But it all got DONE on time!!!

And of course, I ended up deciding not to wear the overskirt. I just liked it better without it. Maybe I'll just use it as a Christmas tree skirt.

Saturday, during the day. Steampunk Harley Quinn. Please note the new lace collar and lace on the sleeves.

Harley, with the red parasol that my best friend bought me as a present. :)

Saturday night, for the ball

Saturday night, another view

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

As you can see, rococopunk didn't happen. I wasn't happy with how it looked and it just wasn't worth the stress of trying to fix it days before leaving. I also wore a lot of leggings with corsets for evening events. Comfortable, cute and steam casual. And I never got my garrison hat or black bloomers made, c'est la vie, oui?

I enjoyed Teslacon. I think it'd be fun to be more involved in the immersion if I go again. I was a little disappointed in both the offered panels and in some of the presentations. I'm not impressed if all you do is read from a paper while speaking. I would go again, but next year is the weekend before Thanksgiving so I won't be able to. I refuse to take that much time off work that close together.

2. Finish the Teslacon stuff - yeah, didn't really finish any of this...
3. Finish a pair of purple leggings I started last winter - These aren't done either...but I did buy some knit for the waistband so I can hopefully finish them soon!
4. Grey and black plaid jumper -- DONE

Finished plaid jumper

Which I'm actually wearing today. It's actually a little shorter than I usually like (I almost always wear my skirts a little past my knee, or at least to the middle of my knee) but since I'm pretty sure I'll always wear it with tights (it's heavy flannel) I think it'll be okay.

Finished skirt! totally love this pattern by the way, so I'm sure I'll be using it again

6. Knit tunic using my funky dress pattern from McCalls -- Cut out but haven't put together yet
7. Black 1950s dress with snowflake overskirt -- in progress, hopefully I can make a big post on this later with all the details :)
8. Black specialty mesh petticoat for said dress -- Haven't started yet
9. Fix my mom's Christmas scrub top and make her a new one -- DONE

Mom's new Christmas scrub top. The other one was enlarged with gores of red and white dotted cotton on the sides.

10. 1940s hooded blouse and trousers from Eva Dress -- I don't think this will happen
11. Nightgown for grandma (if I have enough of the fabric that she wants me to use) -- or this
12. and start a cosplay for Ohayocon -- or this
13. Christmas pajamas that I somehow started for myself -- I just need to add cuffs to the sleeves of the top (they're too short) and this will be done

I bought the penguin flannel for new pajama pants and decided to make a matching top using left over fabric from enlarging my mom's scrub top.

Partially constructed pajama top.

So that's what I've been up to! Sorry for the sporadic blog posts, my goal is to be WAY better with this next year. I hope. Fingers crossed.